Contact modeling in LS-DYNA

6.1 Introduction
Contact treatment forms an integral part of many large-deformation problems. Accurate modeling of
contact interfaces between bodies is crucial to the prediction capability of the finite element simulations.
LS-DYNA o ers a large number of contact types. Some types are for specific applications, and others are
suitable for more general use. Many of the older contact types are rarely used but are still retained to enable
older models to run as they did in the past. Users are faced with numerous choices in modeling contact.
This document is designed to provide an overview of contact treatment in LS-DYNA and to serve as a
guide for choosing appropriate contact types and parameters.
6.2 How Contact Works
In LS-DYNA, a contact is defined by identifying (via parts, part sets, segment sets, and/or node
sets) what locations are to be checked for potential penetration of a slave node through a master segment. A
search for penetrations, using any of a number of di erent algorithms, is made every time step. In the case of
a penalty-based contact, when a penetration is found a force proportional to the penetration depth is applied
to resist, and ultimately eliminate, the penetration. Unless otherwise stated, the contacts discussed here are
penalty-based contacts as opposed to constraint-based contacts. Rigid bodies may be included in any
penalty-based contact but in order that contact force is realistically distributed, it is recommended that the
mesh defining any rigid body be as fine as that of a deformable body.
Though sometimes it is convenient and e ective to define a single contact that will handle any
potential contact situation in a model, it is permissible to define any number of contacts in a single model. It
is generally recommended that redundant contact, i.e., two or more contacts producing forces due to the
same penetration, be avoided by the user as this can lead to numerical instabilities.
To enable flexibility for the user in modeling contact, LS-DYNA presents a number of contact types
and a number of parameters that control various aspects of the contact treatment. In the following sections,
contact types are first discussed with recommendations regarding their application. A description of the
contact parameters is then presented.
6.3 Contact Types
Type 1: *CONTACT_SLIDING_ONLY

Type 2: *CONTACT_TIED_SURFACE_TO_SURFACE

Type 3: *CONTACT_SURFACE_TO_SURFACE

Type 4: *CONTACT_SINGLE_SURFACE
Type 13: *CONTACT_AUTOMATIC_SINGLE_SURFACE
Type a13: *CONTACT_AIRBAG_SINGLE_SURFACE
Type 26: *CONTACT_AUTOMATIC_GENERAL
Type i26: *CONTACT_AUTOMATIC_GENERAL_INTERIOR

Type 5: *CONTACT_NODES_TO_SURFACE

Type 6: *CONTACT_TIED_NODES_TO_SURFACE

Type 7: *CONTACT_TIED_SHELL_EDGE_TO_SURFACE

Type 8: *CONTACT_TIEBREAK_NODES_TO_SURFACE
Type i8: *CONTACT_TIEBREAK_NODES_ONLY

Type 9: *CONTACT_TIEBREAK_SURFACE_TO_SURFACE

Type 10: *CONTACT_ONE_WAY_SURFACE_TO_SURFACE

Type 22: *CONTACT SINGLE EDGE

*CONTACT_AUTOMATIC_SINGLE_SURFACE (with SOFT=2, SBOPT=3 and DEPTH=5)

*CONTACT_AUTOMATIC_GENERAL_INTERIOR

In crash analysis, the deformations can be very large and predetermination of where and how
contact will take place may be di cult or impossible. For this reason, the automatic contact options are
recommended as these contacts are non-oriented, meaning they can detect penetration coming from either
side of a shell element. Automatic contact types in LS-DYNA are identifiable by the occurrence of the word
AUTOMATIC in the *CONTACT command. The contact search algorithms employed by automatic
contacts make them better suited than older contact types to handling disjoint meshes. In the case of shell
elements, automatic contact types determine the contact surfaces by projecting normally from the shell midplane a distance equal to one-half the contact thickness . Further, at the exterior edge of a shell surface, the
contact surface wraps around the shell edge with a radius equal to one-half the contact thickness thus
forming a continuous contact surface. We sometimes refer to this o setting of the contact surfaces from shell
mid-planes as considering shell thickness o sets. The contact thickness can be specified directly or scaled by
the user using optional parameters in the contact definition. If the contact thickness is not specified by the
user, the contact thickness is equal to the shell thickness (or, in the case of single surface contacts, the
minimum of the shell thickness and element edge length). In like fashion, the contact surface for beam
elements (where beam contact is considered) is o set from the beam centerline by the equivalent radius of
the beam cross-section. Because contact surfaces are o set from shell midplanes and from beam centerlines,
it is extremely important that appropriate gaps between shell and beam parts be modeled in the finite
element geometry in order to account for shell thickness and beam cross-section dimensions. Not doing so
will result in initial penetrations in the contact surfaces. LS-DYNA will make one pass to eliminate any
detected initial penetrations by moving the penetrating slave nodes to the master surface. Not all initial
penetrations will necessarily be removed and this can lead to nonphysical contact behavior. Time taken in
setting up an accurate initial geometry is always time well spent.
Most contact types in LS-DYNA place a limit on the maximum penetration depth that is allowed
before the slave node is released and its contact forces are set to zero. This is done mainly in automatic
contact types to prevent large contact forces from developing in the opposite sense should the slave node
pass through a shell mid-plane. This maximum penetration depth is tabulated for various contact types in
Table 6.1 of the Version 960 User s Manual. Sometimes automatic contact interfaces appear not to work
because this contact threshold is reached early in the simulation. This often occurs if extremely thin shell
elements are included in the contact surface. In these cases, contact failure can usually be prevented by
scaling up the default contact thickness or setting the contact thickness to a value larger than the shell
thickness. Alternately, setting SOFT=1 (discussed later) will often correct the problem.
6.3.1 One-Way Treatment of Contact
One-way contact types allow for compression loads to be transferred between the slave nodes and
the master segments. Tangential loads are also transmitted if relative sliding occurs when contact friction is
active. A Coulomb friction formulation is used with an exponential interpolation function to transition from
static to dynamic friction. This transition requires that a decay coe cient be defined and that the static
friction coe cient be larger than the dynamic friction coe cient. The one-way term in oneway contact is used
to indicate that only the user-specified slave nodes are checked for penetration of the master segments. One-

way contacts may be appropriate when the master side is a rigid body, e.g., a punch or die in a metal
stamping simulation. A situation where one-way contact may be appropriate for deformable bodies is where
a relatively fine mesh (slave) encounters a relatively smooth, coarse mesh (master). Other common
applications are beam-to-surface or shell-edge-to-surface scenarios where the beam nodes or the shell edge
nodes, respectively, are given as the slave node set. There are a number of keyword options that activate
one-way contact.
For contact between an airbag (slave) and segmented rigid dummy model (master), one of the following
two contact types are often employed:
*CONTACT_AUTOMATIC_NODES_TO_SURFACE (a5)
*CONTACT_AUTOMATIC_ONE_WAY_SURFACE_TO_SURFACE (a10)
For metal stamping, special one-way forming contacts are recommended with the workpiece defined on the
slave side:
*CONTACT_FORMING_NODES_TO_SURFACE (m5)
*CONTACT_FORMING_ONE_WAY_SURFACE_TO_SURFACE (m10)
Orientation is automatic with forming contacts. The rigid tooling surface can be constructed from
disjoint element patches where contiguous nodal points are sometimes merged out, but not always. These
patches are not assumed to be consistently oriented; consequently, during initialization, the reorientation of
these disjoint element patches is performed. Forming contact tracks the nodal points of the blank as they
move between the disjoint element patches of the tooling surface. Penalty forces are used to limit
penetrations. Generally the ONE_WAY_SURFACE_TO_SURFACE option is recommended since the
penetration of master nodes through the slave surface is considered in adaptive remeshing. Without this
feature, adaptive remeshing may fail to adequately refine the mesh of the blank to capture sharp details in
the master surface, and the master surface will protrude through the blank.
When the surface orientations are known throughout the analysis, the following nonautomatic contact types
may be e ective:
*CONTACT_NODES_TO_SURFACE (5)
*CONTACT_ONE_WAY_SURFACE_TO_SURFACE (10)
*CONTACT_CONSTRAINT_NODES_TO_SURFACE (18)
*CONTACT_ERODING_NODES_TO_SURFACE (16)
If there is a possibility that the nodes of the slave surface can physically end up behind the master
surface, these contact types should be avoided. Shell thickness o sets may or may not be considered with
these non-automatic contact types (see SHLTHK in *CONTROL_CONTACT). If shell thickness o sets are
inactive (default), then the old node-to-surface contact treatment from public domain DYNA3D is used for
contact types 5 and 10 above where incremental searching is used to locate potential master segments for
any given slave node. This searching technique uses segment connectivity; therefore, the master surface
must not be disjoint. If the geometry of the surfaces have sharp angles or if the segments are very badly
shaped, the searching algorithm can fail to find the proper master segment. If the shell thickness o sets are
active, SHLTHK > 0, the master surface is projected based on nodal normal vectors, and the location of the
slave node on a master segment is determined by using global segment-based bucket sorting; therefore, the
master surface can be disjoint and sharp edges and bad element shapes do not create significant problems in
the searching. The use of nodal normal vectors to project the master surface is quite expensive in CPU
costs, but has an advantage that the projected master surface is continuous even for convex surfaces. Until
the FORMING contact types were developed, types 5 and 10 contacts with shell thickness o sets were often
the contact of choice for sheet metal stamping.
The contact type:
*CONTACT_CONSTRAINT_NODES_TO_SURFACE (18)
is similar in treatment to
*CONTACT_NODES_TO_SURFACE with shell thickness o sets.
Being constraint-based rather than penalty-based, type 18 contact cannot be used with rigid bodies.
The forces are computed to keep the slave nodes exactly on the master surface (zero penetration). In

general, this contact has never been as stable as the penalty-based contacts and is, therefore, not
recommended.
Eroding contact types are recommended whenever solid elements involved in the contact definition
are subject to erosion (element deletion) due to material failure criteria. These eroding contacts contain
logic which allow the contact surface to be updated as exterior elements are deleted. In
*CONTACT_ERODING_NODES_TO_SURFACE, the slave side of the contact should be defined using a
node set containing all the nodes (not just nodes on the outer suface) of the slave side part(s).
6.3.2 Two-Way Treatment of Contact
This contact works essentially the same way as the corresponding one-way treatments described above,
except that the subroutines which check the slaves nodes for penetration, are called a second time to check
the master nodes for penetration through the slave segments. In other words, the treatment is symmetric and
the definition of the slave surface and master surface is arbitrary since the results will be the same. There is
an increased cost of approximately a factor of two due to the extra subroutine calls.
In crash analysis, the contact type
*CONTACT_AUTOMATIC_SURFACE_TO_SURFACE (a3)
is a recommended contact type since, in crash simulations, the orientation of parts relative to each other
cannot always be anticipated as the model undergoes large deformations. As mentioned before, automatic
contacts check for penetration on either side of a shell element.
For metal forming simulations, the contact type
*CONTACT_FORMING_SURFACE_TO_SURFACE (m3)
is available but is generally not used in favor of the one-way forming contacts.
The two-way (symmetric) counterparts to the previously discussed contact types 5, 18, and 16 are:
*CONTACT_SURFACE_TO_SURFACE (3)
*CONTACT_CONSTRAINT_SURFACE_TO_SURFACE (17)
*CONTACT_ERODING_SURFACE_TO_SURFACE (14).
6.3.3 Tied Contact (Translational DOF only, No Failure, No O set)
I
n tied contact types, the slave nodes are constrained to move with the master surface. At the
beginning of the simulation, the nearest master segment for each slave node is located based on an
orthogonal projection of the slave node to the master segment. If the slave node is deemed close to the
master segment based on established criteria, the slave node is moved to the master surface. In this way, the
initial geometry may be slightly altered without invoking any stresses. It is always recommended that tied
contacts NOT be defined by part Ids but rather by node/segment sets. In this way, the user has more direct
control over what gets tied to what and thus can prevent unintended constraints. As the simulation
progresses, the isoparametric position of the slave node with respect to its master segment is held fixed
using kinematic constraint equations. Examples of this contact type are:
*CONTACT_TIED_NODES_TO_SURFACE (6)
*CONTACT_TIED_SURFACE_TO_SURFACE (2)
These contact types should generally only be used with solid elements since rotational degrees-o
reedom of the slave node are not constrained. The use of this contact type for shell elements may produce
unrealistically soft behavior. Contact types 2 and 6 di er only in the input format (slave segments vs. slave
nodes); the numerical treatment is the same.
In general, when using tied interfaces between similar materials, the master surface should be the
more coarsely meshed side since these constraints are not applied symmetrically. However, if one material
is significantly softer, the master side should be the sti est material.
Constraint-based tied contacts such as types 2 and 6 cannot be used to tie a rigid body to a
deformable body or to another rigid body. Nodes of deformable bodies that the user wishes to be tied to a
rigid body can be included as extra nodes for the rigid body using the *CONSTRAINED_EXTRA_NODES
command. Alternately, the OFFSET option can be used for tied contacts involving rigid bodies (see below).

6.3.4 Tied Contact (Translational DOF only, No Failure, With O set)

This contact types works the same as above but an o set distance between the master segment and
the slave node is permitted. O set tied contacts use a penalty-based formulation and thus can be used to tie
rigid bodies. Examples of this contact type are:
*CONTACT_TIED_NODES_TO_SURFACE_OFFSET (o6)
*CONTACT_TIED_SURFACE_TO_SURFACE_OFFSET (o2)
This contact type works best if the surfaces are very close, since moments that develop due to the o
set are not taken into account. Not accounting for the moment transmission due to o sets can impose
rotational constraints on the structure. With the penalty approach this is not too much of a problem,
however, with the constraint method, the results can be completely wrong.
To account for the moment transmission between the o set surfaces, two methods are available. The
first, based on a penalty formulation, uses beam-like spring elements to transmit the moments:
*CONTACT_TIED_NODES_TO_SURFACE_BEAM_OFFSET (b6)
*CONTACT_TIED_SURFACE_TO_SURFACE_BEAM_OFFSET (b2)
and the second uses constraint equations:
*CONTACT_TIED_NODES_TO_SURFACE_CONSTRAINED_OFFSET (c6)
*CONTACT_TIED_SURFACE_TO_SURFACE_CONSTRAINED_OFFSET (c2)
The o sets can be reasonably large with the BEAM and CONSTRAINED options. However, since
rotational degrees-of-freedom are not a ected, the o set contacts should not be used with structural elements
like beams and shells. The o set contacts that transmit moments were added to the first release of version
960 after the manual was published.
6.3.5 Tied Contact (Translational DOF and Rotational DOF, With Failure, No O set)
This contact interface uses a kinematic type constraint method to tie the slave nodes to the master
segments and treats both translational and the rotational degrees-of-freedom. Additionally, failure can be
specified when combined with beam elements of material type, *MAT SPOTWELD, when modeling spot
welds. Examples of this contact type are:
*CONTACT_TIED_SHELL_EDGE_TO_SURFACE (7)
*CONTACT_SPOTWELD (7)
*CONTACT_SPOTWELD_WITH_TORSION (s7)
With the above types the nodes are projected to lie on the master segment. This is quite important
for *CONTACT_SPOTWELD, since the beams that model the spot welds need to be as long as possible to
minimize the mass scaling that is necessary to allow the calculation to have a reasonable time step size.
With the TORSION option, the torsional forces in the beam, which models the spot weld, are
transmitted as equivalent forces to the surrounding nodes of the master surface. The rotational constraint
about the axis of the beam is then enforced. The nonlinear shell elements in LS-DYNA have a zero sti ness
drilling degree-of-freedom at each node, so it is necessary to carry the torsional forces through the
membrane behavior of the shell.
6.3.6 Tied Contact (Translational DOF and Rotational DOF, With O set)
These contact interface options uses either a kinematic or penalty type constraint method to tie o set
slave nodes to the master segments:
*CONTACT_TIED_SHELL_EDGE_TO_SURFACE_OFFSET (o7)
*CONTACT_TIED_SHELL_EDGE_TO_SURFACE_BEAM_OFFSET (b7)
*CONTACT_TIED_SHELL_EDGE_TO_SURFACE_CONSTRAINED_OFFSET (c7)

With the BEAM and CONSTRAINED option, the moments that develop from the o sets are
computed and used in the update of the master surface. The nodes involved should belong to deformable
elements. The CONSTRAINED option cannot be used with rigid bodies. The di culty with using even the
penalty option with rigid bodies is related to the nodal masses of the rigid body. If the nodal masses are
accurate then the penalty method is okay. If the masses are nonsense, as is often the case if the rigid body
geometry is accurate but the inertial properties are defined independently of the mesh, then the penalty
method may break down since the nodal masses of the rigid body are used to set the penalties that are used
in the rotational constraints.
6.3.7 Tied Contact (Translational DOF, With Failure)
The following penalty based contact types allow for the definition of failure parameters. It is
extremely important to have the contact segment orientation aligned appropriately as it determines the
tensile and compression direction. Failure can be based on the forces or stress along the normal (tensile) and
shear directions. Examples of this contact type are:
*CONTACT_TIEBREAK_NODES_TO_SURFACE (8)
*CONTACT_TIEBREAK_NODES_ONLY (i8)
*CONTACT_TIEBREAK_SURFACE_TO_SURFACE (9)
6.3.8 Single Surface
These contact types are the most widely used contact options in LS-DYNA, especially for
crashworthiness applications. With these types, the slave surface is typically defined as a list of part ID s.
No master surface is defined. Contact is considered between all the parts in the slave list, including selfcontact of each part. If the model is accurately defined, these contact types are very reliable and accurate.
However, if there is a lot of interpenetrations in the initial configuration, energy balances may show either a
growth or decay of energy as the calculation proceeds.
For crash analysis, the contact type
*CONTACT_AUTOMATIC_SINGLE_SURFACE (13)
is recommended. This contact has improved from version to version of LS-DYNA and is the most popular
contact option.
The older single surface contact type
*CONTACT_SINGLE_SURFACE (4)
should be avoided since it has not undergone improvement. It eventually will be removed or recoded.
The differences between *CONTACT_SINGLE_SURFACE and
*CONTACT_AUTOMATIC_SINGLE_SURFACE are twofold.
First, the older method uses nodal based bucket sorting where closest nodes are found that do not
share common segments. This nodal based searching can break down if the segments vary appreciably in
size and shape, especially, if aspect ratios are large. Secondly, the older method uses segment projection to
determine the contact surface. This requires the calculation of nodal normal vectors that are area weighted
by the segments that share the node, which in turns creates further diffculties for T-intersections and other
geometric complications. The calculation of the vectors can require 25% of the total CPU required.
For modeling the deployment of airbags the following contact option is recommended:
*CONTACT_AIRBAG_SINGLE_SURFACE (a13)
With *AIRBAG_SINGLE_SURFACE, contact between nodes and multiple segments is considered.
Much more searching is done than in the normal contact option and, consequently, this contact option is
much more expensive. During the past several years, the soft constraint option, on optional card A, in the
contact definition, set to 2 has proved to deploy airbags very accurately. We current recommend this option
for airbag deployment. The latter option is currently being implemented for MPP usage.
The final contact is:
*CONTACT_AUTOMATIC_GENERAL (26)

The contact treatment with this option was similar to type 13 through the 950c release of LSDYNA. The main di erence was that three possible contact segments, rather than just two, were stored for
each slave node. With 950d and later versions, type 13 was substantially improved and now type 13 is
frequently more accurate. The main feature of the GENERAL option is that shell edge-to-edge and beamto-beam contact is treated automatically. All free edges of the shells and all beam elements are checked for
contact with other free edges and beams. Unlike type 13 contact, type 26 contact checks for contact along
the entire length of beams and exterior shell edges, not just at the nodes. There is a new option in 960 to
also check internal shell edges (INTERIOR option). This is quite expensive, however, and is not usually
needed. We plan to update this contact type in version 970 of LS-DYNA to include all the recent
improvement in the *AUTOMATIC_SINGLE_SURFACE contact.
6.3.9 Contact Entity
This contact type is used for treating deformable nodes against rigid geometric surfaces. The analytical
equations defining the geometry of the surface are used in the contact calculations. This is an improvement
over the usual segmented surface as represented by a mesh. A penalty-based approach is used in calculating
the forces that resist penetration. This contact type is widely used to couple LSDYNA with rigid body
dummies, which have surfaces approximated by nice geometric shapes such as ellipsoids. An automatic
mesh generator is used to mesh the rigid surfaces to aid visualizing the results. The mesh is not used in the
contact calculations. The analytical rigid surfaces can be of the following types:
Flat Planes (infinite and finite)
Sphere
Cylinder
Hyper-ellipsoid
Torus
Load curve defining the line
CAL3D/MADYMO plane
CAL3D/MADYMO ellipsoid
VDA surface (read from a file) IGES surface (read from a file\

6.4 Contact Stiffness Calculation

Contact treatment is internally represented by linear springs between the slave nodes and the nearest
master segments. The sti ness of these springs determines the force that will be applied to the slave nodes
and the master nodes. There are currently two methods of calculating the contact spring sti ness and they
are briefly discussed below.
6.4.1 Penalty-based approach (SOFT=0 in Optional Card A in '*CONTACT_')
The formula for the stiffness of a contact segment is as follows:

This method is the default method and uses the size of the contact segment and its material
properties to determine the contact spring sti ness. As this method depends on the material constants and the
size of the segments, it works e ectively when the material sti ness parameters between the contacting
surfaces are of the same order-of-magnitude. In cases where dissimilar materials come into contact, the
contact might break down, as the sti ness, which is roughly the minimum of the slave and master stiffness,
maybe too small. This frequently happens with soft dense foams contact metal materials. Consequently, for
crash analysis we do not recommend the option, SOFT = 0, unless prior experience shows that no problems
occur.
6.4.2 Soft Constraint-based approach (SOFT=1 & 2 on Optional Card A in *CONTACT_ )
This non-default method calculates the sti ness of the linear contact springs based on the nodal
masses that come into contact and the global time step size. The resulting contact sti ness is independent of
the material constants and is well suited for treating contact between bodies of dissimilar materials. The sti
ness is found by taking the nodal mass divided by the square of the time step size with a scale factor to
ensure stability.

Generally, for the case of metals contacting metals the resulting penalty sti ness for SOFT = 0 or SOFT = 1
is similar. For the case where soft dense foams contact metal, the option, SOFT = 1 often gives interface
stiffness that are one or two orders-of-magnitude greater. The SOFT = 1 option is recommended for impact
analysis where dissimilar materials come into contact.
The SOFT = 2 option uses mass and time step based penalty sti ness as in SOFT = 1. SOFT = 2 invokes a
segment-based contact algorithm which has it origins in Pinball contact developed by Belytschko and his
co-workers. With this contact algorithm, contact between segments is treated rather than using the usual
node-to-segment treatment. When two 4-noded segments come into contact, forces are applied to eight
nodes to resist segment penetration. This treatment has the e ect of distributing forces more realistically and
sometimes is quite e ective for very stubborn contact problems. The SOFT = 2 option is currently being
ported for MPP calculations. Beam contact is not handled by SOFT = 2 type contact. Further, SOFT = 2 is
available only for surface-to-surface and single surface contacts and not for nodes-to-surface contacts. The

optional parameter EDGE on Optional Card A should be used cautiously when segment-edge-to-segmentedge contact is anticipated and SOFT is set to 2.
6.5 Contact Output
There are numerous output files pertaining to contact which can be written by LS-DYNA. LS-POST
can read these output files and plot the results.
The most common contact-related output file, RCFORC, is produced by including a
*DATABASE_RCFORC command in the input deck. RCFORC is an ASCII file containing resultant
contact forces for the slave and master sides of each contact interface. The forces are written in the global
coordinate system. Note that RCFORC data is not written for single surface contacts as all the contact
forces from such a contact come from the slave side (there is no master side) and thus the net contact forces
are zero. To obtain RCFORC data when single surface contacts are used, one or more force transducers
should be added via the *CONTACT_FORCE_TRANSDUCER_PENALTY command. A force transducer
does not produce any contact forces and thus does not a ect the results of the simulation. A force transducer
simply measures contact forces produced by other contact interfaces defined in the model. One would
typically assign a subset of the parts defined in a single surface contact to the slave side of a force
transducer. No master side is defined. The RCFORC file would then report the resultant contact forces on
that subset of parts.
The ASCII output file NCFORC reports contact forces at each node. The command
*DATABASE_NCFORC is required in the input deck to produce such a file. Further, one or more contact
print flags must be set (see SPR and MPR on Card 1 of *CONTACT_). Only those surfaces whose print
flag is set to a value of 1 will have their nodal contact force output to the NCFORC file.
By including a *DATABASE_SLEOUT command, contact interface energies are written to the ASCII
ouput file SLEOUT. In cases where there are two or more contact interfaces in a model and the global
statistics file (GLSTAT) indicates a problem with contact energy, such as a large negative value, the
SLEOUT file is useful for isolating which contact interfaces are responsible. For general information on
interpreting contact energies, see the LS-DYNA Theory Manual, Section 23.8.4.
In some cases, it can be very useful to visualize contact surfaces and produce fringe plots of contact stress
both in directions normal and tangential to the contact surface. To do this, a binary interface file must be
written by
1. including a *DATABASE_BINARY_INTFOR command in the input deck,
2. setting one or more contact print flags as detailed above,
3. and including the option s=filename on the LS-DYNA execution line where filename is the intended
name of the binary database. The database can be postprocessed using LS-POST.
6.6 Contact Parameters
There are several contact-related parameters in LS-DYNA that can be used to modify or, in many
cases, improve contact behavior. The default settings for these parameters should be used as a starting point,
but often non-default values are appropriate depending on the behavior of the contact. The following
sections describe the most common contact parameters and make general recommendations regarding their
use.
Contact parameters may be set using the commands *CONTROL_CONTACT, 'CONTACT_, and
*PART_CONTACT. Certain parameters may be set using more than one command and so a command
hierarchy must exist. Parameters set with *CONTROL_CONTACT redefine default settings for all contacts
in the model. Contact parameters set in *CONTACT_ ... will override default settings for individual
contacts. Contact parameters set in *PART_CONTACT supercede settings in *CONTACT_ for contact
involving a specific part.
6.6.1 Thickness offsets

Parameter: SLTHK (card 1, *CONTROL_CONTACT and Optional Card A in *CONTACT_option)

AUTOMATIC (*CONTACT_option)
In crashworthiness analysis, sheet metal components are represented using shell elements with the
nodal points at the mid-plane surface. Each shell has a thickness, ts, that by default is equal to the thickness
of the sheet metal. When these components are included in the contact treatment, shell thickness o sets are
used to project the mid-surface of the shell to create the surface for contact. The choice of the contact type
determines whether shell thickness o sets are considered.
In LS-DYNA the non-automatic contact types:
*CONTACT_SURFACE_TO_SURFACE
*CONTACT_NODES_TO_SURFACE
*CONTACT_ONE_WAY_SURFACE_TO_SURFACE
use two di erent treatments depending on the parameter SHLTHK. This parameter can be specified globally
on the *CONTROL_CONTACT card and locally for a given contact definition on optional card B of the
*CONTACT input. If SHLTHK = 0, an incremental search technique is used to determine the closest master
segment and shell thickness o sets are not included. If SHLTHK = 1, LS-DYNA considers the shell
thickness o sets for deformable nodes but ignores the o sets for the nodes of rigid bodies. If SHLTHK = 2,
then LS-DYNA considers the thickness for both deformable and rigid nodes. For SHLTHK set to 1 or 2 a
global bucket search is used to identify contact pairs. After contact is established, incremental searching is
used to track the position of the slave nodes on the master surface. An advantage of global bucket searching
is that the master and slave surfaces can be disjoint. This is impossible if incremental searching is used
since incremental searching assumes that the contact surfaces are fully connected. In these contact types, it
is important to orient the contact segment normals, based on the right-hand-rule, towards the contacting
surface before the calculation begins. This is called oriented contact. An optional automatic orientation
feature may be invoked using the parameter ORIEN on the *CONTROL_CONTACT card; however, for
this option to work a gap must exist between opposing shell mid-plane surfaces.
AUTOMATIC and single surface contact types always consider shell thickness o sets as shown in
Figure ??. These contact types use both global bucket sorting and local incremental searching in
determining the contact pairs. AUTOMATIC contacts are generally more robust than their non-automatic
counterparts since this contact type has no orientation requirement, i.e., contiguous segments do not obey
the right-hand-rule. This is important in crash analysis since metal part can fold over and change the
orientation. The contact search algorithm checks for penetration from either side of the shell mid-plane.

Figure 6.1: Automatic Contact Segment Based Projection

Shell Thickness Offset Recommendations
The AUTOMATIC contact types, which consider shell thickness o sets, are recommended for
impact and crash analysis. If it is desired that shell thickness o sets of rigid components be disregarded, a
non-automatic contact type may be used with the parameter SHLTHK set to 1 in either
*CONTROL_CONTACT or on Optional Card B of *CONTACT. Additionally, it is important to ensure that
the finite element mesh is constructed so that the shell mid-plane surfaces of the opposing parts are set apart
by at least (ts+tm)/2 with meshes of similar density around sharp changes in curvature. If this condition is
not satisfied, LS-DYNA will issue warning messages to indicate that penetrations were detected and that the
penetrating nodes were moved to eliminate the penetrations. Sometimes the modification of the geometry
can change the results. In version 960 of LS-DYNA, an option exists whereby penetrating nodes are not
moved but rather the initial penetrations become the baseline from which additional penetration is
measured. This option of tracking initial penetrations is invoked by setting the parameter IGNORE equal to

1 on Card 4 of *CONTROL_CONTACT or on optional card C of *CONTACT. We recommend that this

option be used in most calculations.
See Sections 6.4 and 6.5 for more on shell thickness o sets. In those sections, the term contact thickness
refers to the magnitude of the shell thickness o sets.
6.6.2 Contact Sliding Friction
Parameters: FS and FD (card 2, *CONTACT option)
Contact sliding friction in LSDYNA is based on a Coulomb formulation and uses the equivalent of an
elastic-plastic spring. Friction is invoked by giving non-zero values for the static and dynamic friction coe
cients, FS and FD, respectively, in the *CONTACT or *PART_CONTACT input. For a detailed description
of the frictional contact algorithm, please refer to Section 23.8.6 in the LS-DYNA Theory Manual.
Contact Sliding Friction Recommendations
When setting the frictional coe cients, physical values taken from a handbook such as Marks,
provide a starting point. Note that to di erentiate static and dynamic friction, FD should be less than FS and
the decay coe cient DC must be nonzero. For numerically noisy problems such as crash, the static and
dynamic coe cients are frequently set equal to avoid the creation of additional noise. The decay coe cient
determines the manner in which the instantaneous net friction coe cient is transitioned from FS to FD. The
parameter, VC, provides a means to limit the frictional contact stress based on the strength of the material.
The suggested value for VC is SIGY/sqrt(3) where SIGY is the minimum yield stress of the materials in
contact. In LS-DYNA, version 960, the optional parameter FRCENG on card 4 of
*CONTROL_CONTACT may be set to write the frictional contact energy to the binary interface database
(*DATABASE_BINARY_INTFOR).
Routinely, one automatic, single-surface contact with numerous dissimilar materials, are used in full
vehicle simulations. In these cases, using a uniform value for FS and FD may be inappropriate. In such
instances, it is recommended that the frictional parameters be specified part by part using the contact option
in the part definition, *PART_CONTACT.
It is helpful in understanding the sensitivity contact friction in a calculation by making two runs utilizing
lower-bound and upper-bound friction coeffcients.
6.6.3 Penalty Scale Factors
Parameters: SFS and SFM (card 3, *CONTACT_option) So-called penalty scale factors provide a
means of increasing or decreasing the contact sti ness. SLSFAC in *CONTROL_CONTACT scales the sti
ness of all penalty-based contacts, which have the parameter SOFT set equal to 0 or 2. SLSFAC is applied
cumulatively with SFS, i.e., the actual scale factor is the product of SFS and SLSFAC, the slave penalty
scale factor, or SFM, the master penalty scale factor, defined on card 3 of the *CONTACT' input. SSF,
when defined in *PART_CONTACT, is cumulative with the aforementioned penalty scale factors. For
contacts with SOFT = 1, the aforementioned penalty scale factors have no a ect; rather SOFSCL on optional
card A is used to scale the contact sti ness when SOFT = 1. (SOFT is the first parameter specified on
optional card A of *CONTACT.)
Penalty Scale Factors Recommendations
The default values (SFS = SFM = 1.0; SLSFAC = 0.1) generally work well for contact between
similarly refined meshes of comparably sti materials. For contacts involving dissimilar mesh sizes and
dissimilar material constants, non-default values penalty scale factors may be necessary to avoid the
breakdown of contact if SOFT = 0. Generally, a better alternative than setting scale factors is to set SOFT =
1 and leave all penalty scale factors at their default values.
6.6.4 Contact Thickness

Parameters: SST and MST (card 3, *CONTACT_option) SST and MST on card 3 of *CONTACT allow
users to directly specify the desired contact thickness. When the default value of SST = MST = 0, is used,
the contact thickness is equal to the element thickness specified in the *SECTION_SHELL card.
Contact Thickness Recommendations
Nonzero values of SST and MST are sometimes used to decrease the contact thickness and thus
eliminate initial penetrations. This is a poor substitute for accurate mesh generation. When using nonzero
values of SST and MST, it is highly recommended to use reasonable values. Specifying a very small
thickness value, such as 0.1mm, will result in contact breakdown owing to the fact that contact thickness
goes into determining the maximum penetration allowed before the contact releases a penetrating node.
Often, by increasing the contact thickness, breakdown of contact involving very thin materials can be
averted. Based on experience, SST and MST should not be less than 0.6 - 0.7 millimeters.
Since nonzero values of SST and MST are applied to all the parts defined in the contact, it may be
more prudent to use the OPTT or SFT parameter in *PART_CONTACT to control the contact thickness for
individual parts in cases where many parts of widely ranging thickness are included in a single contact.
6.6.5 Contact Thickness Scaling
Parameters: SFST and SFMT, card 3, *CONTACT_option) As an alternative to directly specifying
the contact thickness as described above, SFST and/or SFMT may be defined to serve as contact thickness
scale factors. These factors are applied to the shell thickness specified in *SECTION_SHELL in order to
obtain a contact thickness. The default values of SFST and SFMT are 1.0.
Contact Thickness Scaling Recommendations
The same concepts discussed in Contact Thickness Recommendations apply here. Care must be
taken though not to assign contact thickness scale factors so small as to result in a contact thickness that is
less than 0.6 0.7mm.
6.6.6 Viscous Damping
Parameter: V DC (Card 2,*CONTACT_option)
The viscous contact damping parameter, V DC, on card 2 of *CONTACT is zero by default. Originally,
contact damping was implemented to damp out the oscillations that existed normal to the contact surfaces in
sheet metal forming simulations. It has been found that contact damping is often beneficial in reducing
high-frequency oscillation of contact forces in crash or impact simulations.
Viscous Damping Recommendations
In contacts involving soft materials such as foams and honeycombs, frequent instabilities exist due
to contact oscillations. Using a value of V DC between 40 - 60 (corresponding to 40to60% of critical
damping), it is found that the model stability improves; however, it may be necessary to reduce the scale
factor for the time step size. Generally, a smaller value of 20 is recommended when metals, which have
similar material constants, interact.
6.6.7 Contact Segment Extension
Parameter: MAXPAR (Optional Card A , *CONTACT option)
MAXPAR on Optional Card A of *CONTACT controls the enlargement of each contact segment that is
needed to combat an inherent flaw in segment-based projection.
This parameter is no longer used in the AUTOMATIC contact options, except for

'*AUTOMATIC_GENERAL', starting with version 950d of LSDYNA.

Figure ?? shows the contact surface that is projected from the shell mid-plane when using the
segment-based projection scheme. It can be seen that at corners of convex surfaces,an open space or gap is
present in the contact surface through which a slave node could freely enter without any contact detection.
This can result in contact instability, negative contact energy, etc. due to a sudden, large penetration of a
node that has entered through a gap. To combat this problem, the contact surface is automatically extended
a slight distance parallel to the plane of the contact segment (as well as projected normally from the
segment). This slight extention serves to close the gap in the contact surface. In versions starting with 950d,
a cylindrical surface is created in the valley which is used as the contact surface with the forces acting
normal to the surface.

Figure 6.2: Segment extension using MAXPAR. This option is now obsolete in the AUTOMATIC contact
types
6.6.8 Segment Extension Recommendations
The default value of MAXPAR(1.025) works well for most analyses, as most sheet metal
components are not much greater than 3 - 4mm. However, contact instabilities may develop when a part
with a very large thickness (> 5 - 10mm) or having an angular surface is present in the contact definition.
Such an instability may be corrected by reducing the contact thickness (discussed in earlier sections) or by
increasing the segment enlargement parameter MAXPAR (to as high as, but no greater than, a value of 1.2).
Refining the mesh to reduce sharp angles in the contact surface will also help. A certain cost penalty is paid
for MAXPAR values greater than default.
6.6.9 Bucket-Sort Frequency
Parameters: BSORT (Optional Card A , *CONTACT ), NSBCS, (Card 2, *CONTROL_CONTACT)
Bucket sorting refers to a very e ective method of contact searching to identify potential master
contact segments for any given slave node. This sorting is an expensive part of the contact algorithm so the
number of bucket sorts should be kept to a minimum to reduce runtime. If thickness o sets are considered,
then all contact types use the bucket sort approach to track the most probable contacting segments. BSORT
specifies the number of time steps between bucket sorts. Depending on the contact type, the default bucket
sort interval is between 10 and 100 cycles. Except for high speed impact, this interval is almost always
adequate. The contact bucket searching frequency should increase, i.e., BSORT should be reduced, if nodes
move from one disconnected surface to another in short time intervals or if the surface is folding onto itself.
If two relatively smooth simply-connected surfaces are moving across each other without folds, the bucket
sorting can be done at larger intervals. Note that if the surfaces are more than several segment widths away
from each other, no information is stored related to future contact, and later bucket searching is required to
pick up future contacts. Once a slave node is in contact, local searching tracks the motion, and bucket
sorting for the nodes, which are in contact, is not necessary.
Bucket-Sort Frequency Recommendations
In certain contact scenarios where contacting parts are moving relative to each other in a rapid
fashion, such as airbag deployment, more frequent (than default) bucket sorting intervals may improve the
contact behavior. A tell-tale sign inadequate bucket sorting is the appearance of certain penetrating nodes

inexplicably being bypassed in the contact treatment. In such cases, using the BSORT parameter in
*CONTACT or NSBCS in *CONTROL_CONTACT, the user can decrease the cycle interval between
bucket sorts. Rarely will a value of less than 10 be required.
6.6.10 Maximum Penetration
Parameters: PENMAX (Optional card B , *CONTROL_CONTACT), XPENE (Card 2,
*CONTROL_CONTACT)
To avoid instability in models, slave nodes that penetrate too far are eliminated from the contact
algorithm; however, they remain in other calculations. This is done so that very high forces, which are
proportional to large penetration values, are not applied to the penetrating nodes that might lead to
instabilities. It s also necessary for contacts that consider shell thickness o sets to prevent a sudden reversal
in direction of contact force as a penetrating node passes through the shell midplane.
In non-automatic types and SHLTHK = 0, the default maximum penetration is set to 1e + 20. In other
words, no nodes are released at all. When SHLTHK = 1 or 2, the XPENE parameter determines the nodal
release criteria and is given as follows:
Max Distance (Solids) = XPENE (default=4.0)*(thickness of the solid element), SHLTHK = 1
Max Distance (Solids) = 0.05 * (thickness of the solid element), SHLTHK = 2
Max Distance (Shells) = XPENE (default=4.0) * (thickness of shell element), SHLTHK = 1
Max Distance (Shells) = 0.05 * (minimum diagonal length), SHLTHK = 2
In AUTOMATIC types and single surface, excluding AUTOMATIC GENERAL, the maximum allowable
penetration is a function of PENMAX that is set to a default value of 0.4(40%). The maximum allowable
penetration in these cases are shown below: *
Max Distance = PENMAX * (thickness of the solid)
Max Distance = PENMAX * (slave thickness + master thickness)
For AUTOMATIC GENERAL only, the default value of PENMAX is set to 200 and provides an almost no
nodal release criteria.
Maximum Penetration Recommendations
It is generally recommended that parameters a ecting maximum penetration not be changed from the default
values. If nodes penetrate too far and are released, the preferred solution is to increase the contact sti ness,
change the penalty formulation (SOFT), or increase the contact thickness.
6.7 Modeling Guidelines For Full Vehicle Contact
Crash analysis involving a full vehicle incorporates contact interactions between all free surfaces. This is
quite expensive since 20-30 percent of the total calculation CPU time is used by the contact treatment. One
of the challenging aspects of contact modeling in crash analysis is the handling of interactions between
structural metallic parts and nonstructural components typically made from foam and plastic. This is
especially important when occupants are included in the model. Another challenge is handling contact at
corners or edges of geometrically complex parts. Guidelines should be followed to achieve stability in
contact as well as reasonable contact behavior. Some of the modeling practices based on experience are
discussed below.
6.7.1 Global or Local Contact
Historically, many individual contact definitions were used for the treatment of contact. The development
and implementation of a robust single surface type of contact has changed the way engineers model the
contact today. From the standpoints of simplicity in preprocessing, numerical robustness, and computational

effciency, it is now usually advantageous to forsake the use of numerous contact definitions in favor of
ONE singlesurface- type contact that includes all parts which may interact during the crash event. We often
casually refer to this single contact approach as a global contact approach.
This, however, does not mean that one should always avoid local contact definitions. Frequently, there exist
certain areas of the vehicle that require special contact considerations where the global contact definition is
observed to fail. In such instances the user is encouraged to define local contact interfaces with non-default
parameters that would best suit the contact condition.
6.7.2 AUTOMATIC_SINGLE_SURFACE or AUTOMATIC_GENERAL
Though both contact algorithms belong to the single surface contact type, several key parameters
distinguish these two contact types. Table ?? highlights the important differences.

Table 6.1: Difference Between *AUTOMATIC_SINGLE_SURFACE (13) and *AUTOMATIC_GENERAL

(26)
Of the two single surface contact types listed in Table ??, *AUTOMATIC_GENERAL is computationally
more expensive owing to its additional capabilities and its more frequent and thorough contact search. The
*AUTOMATIC_SINGLE_SURFACE contact option is recommended for global contact. To treat special
contact conditions where shell edge-to-edge or beam-to-beam contact is anticipated, the additional use of
the *AUTOMATIC_GENERAL contact in localized regions is recommended. *AUTOMATIC_GENERAL
contact should be used sparingly and only where conditions dictate its use. One advantage of the
*AUTOMATIC_SINGLE_SURFACE contact starting with LSDYNA version 950d is in its more rigorous
treatment of interior sharp corners within the finite element mesh and in the handling of triangular contact
segments; consequently, the AUTOMATIC_SINGLE_SURFACE contact is usually superior for parts
meshed from triangular and tetrahedron elements. In future version of LS-DYNA, the
*AUTOMATIC_GENERAL option will also include these improvements.
6.7.3 Standard Penalty-Based or Soft Constraint Stiffness Method
When several parts of dissimilar mesh sizes and/or dissimilar material properties are included into one
global slave set for *AUTOMATIC_SINGLE_SURFACE, the soft constraint sti ness method (SOFT=1) is
recommended. The soft constraint method seeks to maximize contact sti ness while also maintaining stable
contact behavior. The interacting nodal masses and the global time step are used in formulating the contact
sti ness. The segment-based contact method, invoked by setting SOFT=2, calculates contact sti ness much
like the soft constraint method but otherwise is quite di erent. Segment-based contact can often be quite e
ective where other methods fail at treating contact at sharp corners of parts.
In contrast to a soft constraint approach, the standard penalty-based contact sti ness (SOFT=0) is based on
material elastic constants and element dimensions. In foam and plastic materials, the contact sti ness given
by the two methods can di er by one or more orders of magnitude. The primary disadvantage of choosing
the soft constraint method is its dependence on the global time step. Occasionally, the global time step must
be scaled down using the TSSFAC parameter in *CONTROL_TIMESTEP to avoid numerical instabilities
in the contact behavior. This results in an increased run time for the entire simulation. As an alternative to
reducing the global time step the soft constraint scale factor, SOFSCL, in the *CONTACT definition can be
reduced from the default value of 0.1 to 0.04-0.07. If the standard penalty-based approach in used in a

global contact definition, the soft constraint approach can be used locally to handle dissimilar materials in
contact. The following are examples where contact behavior may benefit from use of the soft constraint
method:
Airbag to Steering Wheel
Airbag to Occupant
Front Tire to SIL
Spare tire to neighboring components
Foam to structural components
Using a combination of both contact sti ness methods may promote good contact behavior without having
to reduce the global time step.
6.7.4 Definition of Slave Set
There are several ways to define the slave set for the global contact definition. These include: all parts (this
is the default), a set of included parts, a set of excluded parts, or a set of segments. The default, which
includes all parts, can sometimes result in obvious instabilities at the beginning of a simulation unless great
care is taken in setting up the model to avoid such things as initial penetrations and nonphysical
intersections of parts. The option to ignore penetrations on the *CONTROL_CONTACT keyword (set
IGNORE equal to 1) is recommended if care is not taken to eliminate initial penetrations.
Many models run perfectly with just one interface definition; others, however, will not run until changes are
made to the input, usually by excluding parts or by modifying the finite element mesh to more accurately
reflect the physical model. To reiterate, the following methods can be used for defining the global contact
definition:
All parts (default)
Included parts by *SET PART
Excluded parts by *SET PART. Non-Excluded parts will be considered for contact
Segments by *SET SEGMENT
In addition to the above slave sets, a three-dimensional box, defined using *DEFINE_BOX, may be used to
restrict the contact to the parts or segments that lie within the box at the start of the calculation. This will
reduce the extent of the contact definition leading to a reduction in contact-associated cpu time.
6.7.5 Friction
When using one global contact that includes several components of the vehicle, a uniform friction coe cient
(possibly zero) may be acceptable for initial analyses. However, the use of *PART_CONTACT keyword to
specify friction coe cients on a part-by-part basis is recommended when friction is expected to play a
significant role. Friction coe cients specified in *PART_CONTACT will override friction coe cients
specifed elsewhere if and only if FS in *CONTACT is set to -1.0. Please note that the dynamic friction coe
cient FD will have no e ect unless a nonzero decay coe cient DC is provided.
6.7.6 Contact Thickness
To reduce the number of initial penetrations, the contact thickness can changed from the default element
thickness by using the global SST and MST parameters in *CONTACT. The OPTT parameter in
*PART_CONTACT can be used to override SST and MST on a part-by-part basis. The user is cautioned
against setting the contact thickness to an extremely small value as this practice will often cause contact
failure. In fact, for treating contact of very thin shells, e.g., less than 1 mm, it may be necessary to increase
the contact thickness to prevent contact failure.
If a contact surface is comprised of tapered shell elements, then a uniform contact thickness should always
be specified. The contact assumes that the segment thickness is constant, which can result in thickness
discontinuities between adjacent segments. As a node moves between segments of di ering thickness, the

interface force will either suddenly drop or increase as a result of the discontinuous change in the
penetration distance. This can result in negative contact interface energies.
6.8 Airbag Contact
Simulation of airbag deployment and interaction of an airbag with other components may require special
contact treatment. Some of the challenges associated with airbag contact are as follows:
High Airbag Nodal Velocity (> 100m/s)
Soft Tissue Properties (E < 50Mpa)
Small Tissue Thickness (< 0.5mm)
Frequent Initial Penetrations in Folded Bag
Treatment of Airbag Fabric Layers
To promote stability and accuracy in simulating airbag contact, the following contact types and contact
parameters are recommended.
6.8.1 Airbag Self-Contact
When
treating
airbag
self-contact
(fabric-to-fabric
contact),
the
use
of
*CONTACT_AIRBAG_SINGLE_SURFACE is highly recommended. This contact type is based on
*CONTACT_AUTOMATIC_SINGLE_SURFACE but has significant modifications to account for the di
culties associated with deployment of a folded airbag.
SOFT = 2 is generally recommended (SMP only) to better deal with the many initial penetrations present in
a folded airbag and to invoke a segment-to-segment contact search which is often advantageous in dealing
with the complex geometry of a folded or partially unfolded airbag. Airbag contact with SOFT = 2 is
expensive relative to other contact options so to improve cpu performance when using SOFT = 2, an
additional contact with SOFT = 0 or 1 can be implemented as shown in Figure ??. By defining two separate
contacts and employing contact birthtime and deathtime to switch from the SOFT = 2 contact to the SOFT
= 1 contact when the bag has unfolded, a good combination of contact reliability and e ciency can be
acheived.

Figure 6.3: Airbag Self Contact Algorithm Switch

If the airbag simulation is run using an MPP executable, note that SOFT = 2 is not yet available and so
SOFT = 0 or 1 must be used. For a folded airbag, this will likely mean that a load curve defining the fabric
contact thickness versus time will be necessary to transition from a very small thickness in the folded state
to a larger thickness as the bag unfolds. This is done to prevent initial penetrations in the folded state and
still have good contact behavior during the unfolding process. The contact thickness vs. time curve is
identified by LCIDAB on Optional Card A of *CONTACT. As a possible alternative to a time-dependent
contact thickness, the user may try invoking the option for tracking of initial penetrations by setting
IGNORE = 1 on Optional Card C. This latter option is new in version 960 and has not been thoroughly
checked out for airbag applications.
6.8.2 Airbag-to-Structure Contact

During and after airbag deployment, the airbag fabric comes into contact with other parts of the
model such as the steering wheel, occupant, instrument panel, door trim components and, in the case of side
curtain deployment, the seat. For these contact conditions, a two-way contact such as
*CONTACT_AUTOMATIC_SURFACE_ TO_SURFACE is generally recommended. In instances when
the airbag nodes comprise the slave side in a one-way type contact such as
*CONTACT_AUTOMATIC_NODES_TO_SURFACE, the structural nodes are not checked for penetration
through the airbag segments. This may result in noticeable penetration of finely-meshed structural
components
into
airbag
segments.
Single
surface
contacts
such
as
*CONTACT_AUTOMATIC_SINGLE_SURFACE for airbag-to-structure interaction may be ill-advised as
this would result in duplication of self-contact treatment for the fabric.
Di culties in airbag-to-structure contact are largely associated with significant di erences in material bulk
moduli (up to 1000x) and very low thickness of the fabric. To avoid premature nodal release triggered by a
small fabric thickness, it is recommended that the contact thickness of the fabric be set to a minimum value
of 1.0 mm. Since a wide range of materials are involved, the use of SOFT = 1 is highly recommended as it
eliminates the need to fine-tune penalty scale factors. An example of the overall setup for airbag-related
contact is shown in Figure 6.4.

Figure 6.4: Airbag Contact Definition

6.9 Edge-to-Edge Contact
Most contact types do not check for edge-to-edge penetrations as the search entails only nodal penetration
through a segment. This may be adequate in many cases; however, in some unique shell contact conditions,
the treatment of edge-to-edge contact becomes very important. There are several ways to handle edge-toedge contact; the merits/demerits of each one of these methods are discussed below.
6.9.1 *CONTACT_AUTOMATIC_GENERAL excluding Interior Edges
By default, *CONTACT_AUTOMATIC_GENERAL considers only exterior edges in its edge-to-edge
treatment as indicated by Figure ??. An exterior edge is defined as belonging to only a single element or
segment whereas interior edges are shared by two or more elements or segments. The entire length of each
exterior edge, as opposed to only the nodes along the edge, is checked for contact. As with other penaltybased contact types, SOFT=1 can be activated to e ectively treat contact of dissimilar materials.

Figure 6.5: Interior and Exterior Shell Edges

6.9.2 *CONTACT_AUTOMATIC_GENERAL including Interior Edges
Edge-to-edge contact which includes consideration of interior edges may be invoked in one of two
ways. One method takes advantage of the beam-to-beam contact capability of
*CONTACT_AUTOMATIC_GENERAL. This labor-intensive approach involves creating null beam
elements (*ELEMENT_BEAM, *MAT_NULL) approximately 1mm in diameter (elform = 1, ts1 = ts2 =
1.2mm, tt1 = tt2 = 0 in *SECTION_BEAM) along every interior edge wished to be considered for edge-toedge contact and including these null beams in a separate AUTOMATIC GENERAL contact. This is
illustrated in Figure ??. The elastic constants in *MAT_NULL are used in determining the contact stiffness
so reasonable values should be given. Null beams do not provide any structural stiffness.

Figure 6.6: Null Beams to treat edge-to-edge treatment

A preferred alternative to the null beam approach, available in version 960, is to invoke the interior edge
option by using *CONTACT_AUTOMATIC_GENERAL_INTERIOR. A certain cost penalty is associated
with this option.
6.9.3 *CONTACT_SINGLE_EDGE
This contact type treats edge-to-edge contact but, unlike the other options above, it treats only edge-toedge
contact. This contact type is defined via a part ID, part set ID, or a node set on the slave side. The master
side is omitted.

6.10 Rigid Body Contact Components for which deformation is negligible and stress is unimportant may
be modeled as rigid bodies using *MAT_RIGID or *CONSTRAINED_NODAL_RIGID_BODY. The
elastic constants defined in *MAT_RIGID are used for contact sti ness calculations. Thus the constants
should be reasonable (properties of steel are often used). Though there are several contact types in LSDYNA which are applicable specifically to rigid bodies (RIGID appears in the contact name), these types
are seldom used. Any of the penalty-based contacts applicable to deformable bodies may also be used with
rigid bodies, and in fact, are generally preferred over the RIGID contact types. Rigid bodies and deformable
materials may be included in the same penalty-based contact definition. Constraints and constraint-based
contacts may not be used for rigid bodies.
Rigid bodies should have a reasonably fine mesh so as to capture the true geometry of the rigid part. An
overly coarse mesh may result in contact instability. Another meshing guideline is that the node spacing on
the contact surface of a rigid body should be no coarser than the mesh of any deformable part which comes
into contact with the rigid body. This promotes proper distribution of contact forces. As there are no stress
or strain calculations for a rigid body, mesh refinement of a rigid body has little effect on cpu requirements.
In short, the user should not try to economize in the meshing of rigid bodies.
*CONTACT_ENTITY is an altogether different way of defining an analytic, rigid contact surface which
interacts with nodes of deformable bodies. For more information
6.11 Summary Table
The contact types can be grouped as follows:
Group A: Types 3, 5, 10 (SHLTHK = 0)
Group B: Types 3, 5, 10 (SHLTHK = 1)
Group C: Types 5, 13, 14, 15, 16, a3, a5, a10, 26
Group D: Types 19, 20, 21

RIGID WALL CONTACT

1. Flexible Body - Rigid Wall

2. Rigid Body - Rigid Wall &epsilonr . . . penaltyfactor rigid body

&epsilons . . . penaltyfactor rigid wall

Spring forces: Fi = &epsilons &deltai
Options of the stonewalls:
initial mass and velocity
fixed in space
velocity or displacement specified by a load curve
A stonewall may extent to infinity or the extent may be finite.
Friction:
frictionless sliding after contact
no sliding after contact
coulomb friction Fc = FN
orthotropic frictional coe cients by defining fixed vectors
orthotropic frictional coe cients by defining nodes

Figure 7.1: Generalized Stonewalls

CONSTRAINTS AND SPOTWELDS

Constraint nodes:
1. Common translational degrees of freedom in common
x, y, or z translational DOF
x-y, y-z, or x-z translational DOF
x-y-z translational DOF
2. Rigid massless truss (rivet)

Force vector always in direction of the rigid truss.

3. Rigid massless beam (spotweld)

Transmission of moments, shear and normal forces

Brittle failure of the spotweld occur when

Spotweld failure due to plastic straining occurs when the e ective nodal plastic strain exceeds the
input value
This option can model the tearing out of a spotweld from the sheet metal due to plasticity in the material
surrounding the spotweld.
Constraints between nodes and surfaces
4. Contact type 8: nodes spotwelded to surface
Slave nodes are tied to the masters until a failure criterion is reached. Thereafter they can slide on or
separate from the masters as in a type 5 contact surfaces. This type of surface can be used to represent spotwelded or bolted connections.
Failure criterion:

Constraints between surfaces

5. Contact type 1: sliding
Sliding only, no separation. Only sliding along the contact surfaces, no separation.
6. Contact type 2: tied
Tying surfaces with translational degrees of freedom. Nodes of one surface are tied to the opposite surface
and vice versa.
7. Contact type 9: tiebreak interface
This is similar to type 8 except that failure is based on stress rather than force at individual nodes.

UNITS
There is no way of telling LS-DYNA what units the model uses so units must be compatible. One way of
testing whether a set of units is compatible is to check that:

and that

Examples of sets of compatible units are:

ELEMENTS
10.1 Solids
The 8-node solid element by default uses one point integration plus viscous hourglass control. Fully
integrated brick elements are also available - see *SECTION_SOLID (Material Card 1, Column 80 for
IARB=0, Property Set Card 1, Column 25 for IARB=1) and Section 3.3 of the Theory Manual- ; these
perform better where element distortions are large but are about four times more costly. No hourglass
control is needed as there are no zero-energy modes. Wedges and tetrahedra are simply degenerate bricks
(i.e some of the nodes are repeated); they cause problems in some situations and are best avoided.
10.2 Shells
All shell elements include membrane, bending and shear deformation. The default Belytschko-Tsay
formulation is the most economical and should be used unless features particular to other formulations are
required e.g.:
Hughes Liu: can o set the mid-plane of the element away from the nodes.
S/R co-rotational Hughes-Liu: fully integrated, so hourglass deformations do not occur (but much more
costly).
Belytschko-Tsay membrane: (and fully integrated membrane): appropriate for fabrics etc. where bending
stiffness is negligible.
As degenerate quadrilateral shell elements are prone to lock under transverse shear, triangular shell
elements have now been implemented, based on work by Belytschko and co-workers. Triangular shells can
be mixed with quadrilateral shells within the same material property set, provided that the element sorting
flag ITRIST on *CONTROL_SHELL (Control Card 12, Column 20) is set to 1.
Three-dimensional plane stress constitutive subroutines are implemented for the shell elements which
update the stress tensor such that the stress component normal to the shell mid surface is zero. The
integration points are stacked vertically at the centroid of the element, as shown in Figure ??.
Through-thickness directions at each node are initially normal to the element surface but rotate with the
nodes. Strains are linear through the thickness. Two integration
Solid Elements

Shell Elements

Beam and Truss Elements

Discrete Elements

Figure 10.01: Integration Points

points are su cient for linear elastic material, while more points are required for nonlinear material. Stress
output gives stresses at the outermost integration points, not at the surfaces (despite the nomenclature of
post-processors, which refer to top and bottom surfaces), so care is needed in interpretation of results. For
elastic materials, stresses can be extrapolated to the surfaces. For nonlinear materials the usual policy is to
choose four or five integration points through the thickness and to ignore the error (i.e. the di erence in
stress between the surface and the outermost integration point). The location of the outermost integration
points for Gauss quadrature are given in the following table:

10.2.1 Newton-Cotes Formulas

In the Newton-Cotes method r pairs of weights wi and regularly spaced coordinates &xii integrate a
polynomal of degree r - 1 exactly.

Trapezoidal Rule (r=2, domain divided into n subdomains)

Simpson Rule (r=3, domain divided into n subdomains)

10.2.2 Gauss Integration

In the Gauss method r pairs of weights wi and coordinates &xii integrate a polynomal of degree m <= 2r - 1
exactly.

10.2.3 Gauss Lobatto Integration

Figure 10.2 shows the displacement of a cantilever beam subjected to a load at the free end.
This figure shows the poor behaviour of the Trapezoidal integration rule (order r=2) using up to 19
subdomains (20 integration points) compared with other Newton-Cotes formulas without using
subdomains. Using order r=3 (Simpson points) already gives the correct result.

Figure 10.2: Poor behaviour of trapezoidal rule

10.3 Location of Integration Points Through Thickness

In LS-DYNA the location of integration points through thickness of shell elements for LS-POST database
depends on
database (d3plot or ASCII database elout)
number of shell integration points written to the d3plot database, MAXINT on
*DATABASE_EXTENT_BINARY, (Control Card 21, Column 20)
quadrature rule (Gauss, trapezoidal, user defined)
Assume a shell element with five through thickness integration points. Then the location of these
integration points for LS-POST database is as shown in figures 10.3 and 10.4.

Figure 10.3: Location of integration points for NIP=5, MAXINT=5

Figure 10.4: Location of integration points for NIP=5, MAXINT=3

Energy data
The energy data which is printed in the d3hsp and glstat files forms a useful check on an analysis. The
following equation should hold at all times during an analysis.

Where

Internal energy includes elastic strain energy and work done in permanent deformation. External
work includes work done by applied forces and pressures as well as work done by velocity, displacement or
acceleration boundary conditions.
Energy associated with hourglassing is excluded by default, but can be included by setting HGEN to 2 on
*CONTROL_ENERGY (Control Card 19, Column 5).
The computation of Rayleigh damping energy dissipation can be activated by setting RYLEN to 2 on
*CONTROL_ENERGY (Control Card 19, Column 20). When activated, this energy dissipation is added to
the internal energy.
The terms in the equation can all be plotted using LS-POST and ASCII database glstat. If the equation does
not hold the user should suspect an error. If the left hand side of the equation rises above the right hand side,
energy is being introduced artificially - for example, by numerical instability, or the sudden detection of
artificial penetration through a contact surface (see Section ??). The latter condition is often shown by
sudden jumps in the total energy. If the left hand side falls below the right hand side, energy is being
absorbed artificially, perhaps by excessive hourglassing or by stonewalls or over-compliant contact
surfaces.
The energy in each material can also be plotted using LS-POST. If the total energy indicates an error,
plotting by material can sometimes indicate where the problem is occurring.
The energy ratio is defined by

This energy ratio may be used as a criterium for termination of calculation by defining ENDENG on
*CONTROL_TERMINATION (Control Card 8, Columns 31-40).